Health to the Company
by Black 13 Productions
Summary: Meet the Horsemen, a group of friends under a prestigious title working to help get the needy citizens of Motorcity back on their feet when disaster strikes. [Based around OCs with very little canon involvement!]
1. Introduction

_I remember when Papa told me that I was going to be his legacy._

_He used to sit in Xerxes before going out, back before the Dome closed, before the countryside became dead. He would pat my head before he and the other Horsemen -the first generation- rolled out on another vigilante mission to prevent the Dome from encroaching into the land around it, revving their engines in farewell._

_Something tells me that this was not entirely what Papa had meant when he said I would inherit his legacy._

_There was no car to take when he retired, as was the plan. Xerxes watches the Dome from the west, a twisted and mangled husk of metal like a silent guardian with the other three of his mechanical brethren facing in from the other cardinal directions. I like to think that the original Horsemen still keep watch from their tombs, making sure the Dome does not expand further outward. So far, Kane has not proposed any plans to do so. I'll continue to believe that silly superstition so long as it stays that way._

_Papa was watching when we packed up and moved into the confines of the Dome before the final panels were put in place. The sun was shining, I remember. Even partially stripped down to bare frame, Xerxes was smiling, the holes where headlights had been tilted up slightly and the grill bent in a wide grin. That final glimpse was the last we saw of the sky, glinting off the remaining panels on that old Corvette's frame._

_Me and mine were in our late teens back then._

_We are in our late twenties now. It's been a decade, give or take a year or two, since we saw a real sky. We see this as a taste of real freedom and integrate it into our inherited legacy. The first Horsemen protected the people outside Detroit from Kane. It's our turn now, the responsibility rests on us. There is no one outside the Dome any longer, none that the first Horsemen can't keep safe. Our job is internal, an attempt to keep innocent civilians safe from harm._

_Buildings that were homes and businesses fall every day, either from neglect and age or from the efforts of the new generation of vehicular vigilantes that call themselves the Burners. We have turned our own revolutionary heritage into a disaster control and relocation service. After all, these people need all the help they can get from people who know the terrain better than they do._

_We don't ask for payment; never have and never will. I think it's wrong, taking advantage of a family who has just lost everything. All they want is a roof over their heads; a safe, sturdy roof. Horsemen do what they can to protect those who need them and worry about themselves another day._

_Papa would be proud of us, I think. We are for the people, as he was._

_We are Horsemen and we wear that title with all the pride it should entail._

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**A/N****: An idea I've had for a while. Since Motorcity first started. I was going to wait to give out media and such on my MC OCs until more of the world had been built, but with the impending end to the series, now is as good a time as ever.**

**Meet the Horsemen, a small group of people dedicated to helping the needy in Motorcity in any way they can. Part of a bigger drabble project that I hope to work on and off, featuring other peoples' OCs (known and obscure) as well as interactions with some of the canon cast.**

**IF YOU HAVE AN OC YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO USE!**  
**-Contact me and let me know**  
**-Have details about said OC ready**  
**-We will talk from there and keep in contact until posting (and after too, if you prefer)**

**Keep in mind that ALL drabbles in this collection are about interactions with the Horsemen.**

**Hope to post more! Sorry for the shortness; too much would have made it ... wordy.**

**Motorcity (c) Chris P.; Titmouse**  
**Horsemen (c) moi**


	2. Elysium for the Brave -- Part I

**A/N**:** Have the first half of this dribblet. There is a LOT more to come, but the excerpt was long enough to be an installment and people kept wanting it up. So! Have the first part.**

* * *

Xerxes roared to life, the powerhouse of an engine rattling the walls of the old garage and the farmhouse next to it, the window panes shimmying in their frames. He sounded like a dragon waking up from a long slumber, his call answered by three more voices in the small neighborhood cluster.

The battle-cry was familiar to young Fae, and yet all the same, it was unfamiliar. It woke her out of a dead sleep. The clock at her bedside, with the big LED numbers in red, told her it was one twenty-three in the morning. Her brow furrowed. That was unusually early for Papa to be rolling out the troops, she thought.

She kicked the bed covers off her legs and rolled out of bed, walking to her bedroom window to look at the road below. Sure enough, that was Xerxes leading Voodoo Night slowly down the dirt service roads. Paraquat and Bubonic were coming in to flank Voodoo as the procession made its way for the roughly paved road not too far from there.

It struck her as strange, confusing her enough that she pushed the window open and looked up at the sky. The night air was crisp, cool. It rushed over her sleep-warmed body and gave her goosebumps along her arms. The sky was black, studded with stars. At least, as many stars as they could get without the bleeding of the lights from Detroit, forty-five minutes away.

Everything looked real and yet surreal at the same time. Was she dreaming? There was a haze on everything that made her feel that she was, but she had to be absolutely sure. She was running down the stairs and out the front door to catch up with the Corvette Stingray at the front before she was aware of what she was actually doing.

The screen door slammed shut, the noise sounding like it was echoing. Then again, in the little six-house community, every little sound seemed to echo. The slam stopped Xerxes' progression down the road, or so Fae would have thought. Deep within, she knew it was actually the sight of her running across the lawn toward the rumbling car.

There was an audible click of the window on the driver's side unlocking, the tinted translucent pane rolling down to reveal the familiar age-weathered face of a man. He was smiling, but it had a worried look to it, as though something were troubling his mind that he refused to show.

"Aren't you supposed to be in bed, little miss?" he asked with an amused quirk in his voice.

"Aren't _you_, Papa?" she repeated back, crossing her arms and raising her chin a little ways. She had taken it on herself when her mother finally passed seven years prior to be her father's keeper in times like this. Mama would have wanted it that way.

He laughed at her. It was never malicious, just a chuckle with a slight head tilt. "I'm sorry, Fae. I should be in bed, but..."

His face began to fall a bit. She knew that look. Papa had been a mechanic, mostly on-call and on-site for farming equipment. He was not entirely a fighter, did not like to fight. Sometimes, though, he had to and he always gave her that same look. _I don't want to, but it's necessary_, it said.

His lips pursed as he added, "...We received a transmission. Kane is moving the scaffolding tonight, when he thinks we won't come. If we can strike him here, we might be able to stop his progression for good. We'll be able to live freely without fear of him encroaching on us."

Fae grew quiet, but her own expression said all she wanted to. Her lips thinned, her arms crossed at her chest, and her eyes lowered.

He sighed as soon as her eyes left him. "Are you ashamed of your papa now?"

She looked to one side, arms tightening so that she doubled over. She was trying to make it look like it was the cold of early morning, but the worried look spreading across her face gave away the ruse. "I don't vant to fight anymore. Vhy can't ve just let him dig his own grave?"

"We've been over this." he told her, the exhaust of having said the same thing repeatedly hanging on every syllable. "That man murdered your mother, wants to annex these lands to feed his new utopist vision. We talked about this before it started and you agreed then."

"Because I didn't zink you'd be going out at ze ass-crack of night." Fae raised her gaze back to her father, crinkling her nose a bit. "If you ask me, zis whole zing ist starting to stink pretty badly. It's not above Kane to start pulling aces randomly out of his sleeves."

Papa raised a hand, slowly pointing at his daughter. "_That_ language is too old for you…"

"Papa, I'm eighteen."

"Still too old for you."

The quirk of a grin crossed her face at his accusations despite her trying to keep it down. "_Somevone_ has to be ze mature vone in zis relationship."

His face twisted, an expression of amused insult crossing it. "Now _that's_ going a bit far, little miss. But it's not going to stop me from doing what I think is right. Nice try, but you're shooting around the target instead of hitting it head-on."

As the final word left his mouth, the air grew heavy and gained a strong smell of ozone and hot tin. With a crackle, Voodoo lit up, the ground around the old Thunderbird rippling with bright light. The entire chassis had been activated, temporarily electrified in place of a horn, white-light streaks coursing from nose to tail-end. Papa looked out the window a bit further and back to the impatient driver behind him, raising a hand toward them as a sign of good faith.

"Looks like good old Death wants out to create some mayhem." he muttered before turning back to his daughter. "Listen, you. Go back to bed, alright? I'll be home before the sun comes up."

Fae had leveled her dark gaze on the dark-tinted windshield of the Thunderbird. Knowing Death, that would not be intimidating. The French-Cajun woman sitting in the driver's seat would either brush it off or take it up with her father on the drive out to Detroit.

"Just be careful. Alright?" she said, heaving a small sigh of defeat. Try as she might, she was not going to win this round. Papa was set on ending their small resistance against Abraham Kane as soon as he could.

_It's necessary_, the look he gave her said.

She took a step back away from Xerxes. The Dragon made his roar again as her father pushed the gas pedal. It was his call to arms and a signal to the others to be ready to move out soon. As expected, it was answered by Voodoo Night first, the Thunderbird coursing again with a single wave of its white lightning, Paraquat and Bubonic behind sounding their revving engines in response.

Before Papa rolled the window back up, his eyes met hers. "Love you, alright? I'll see you soon."

The window broke the contact line, the locking mechanism holding the tempered plate in place sounding to say that everything was in place. Fae took a few more big steps backward to allow the task-force to roll out. Xerxes lead the attack, as always, the black Corvette clicking into gear proper before leaping forward with a vicious snarl. With a returned growl, the other three Horsemen followed in single file behind and down the roads out of the countryside.

The night grew quiet again, the fading rumble through the ground that was Xerxes' initial war cry signified that the four warriors were gone, a single echoing roar out of the Corvette the final farewell. Crickets took up the moment of silence, sensing the danger was passed. They were tentative at first, one or two intermittently chirping back and forth before it sounded like nothing short of a small army of the creatures was hiding just out of sight.

"You a'ight, cher?"

"You're not a cricket." Fae sounded amused, turning her head over her shoulder to look toward the newcomer. Death's son, Orion, had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and was standing on the lawn between her and the house.

Orion was the youngest of her fraternal twins. The sixteen-year-old Creole's sister was riding with their mother, not an uncommon occurrence. After all, Abigail was to take up their mother's mantle.

Orion chuckled some at the accusation. "Nah, I'm no cricket. But neit'er are _t'ose_ metal beasts. Somet'in' up?"

Fae shook her head. "Somezing stinks, is vat's up. Never heard in ze last seven or so years of Kane leaking a transmission in ze middle of ze night. If somezing like zis vas happening legitimately, he'd haf done it sooner. Right? Take measures to get around any resistance early, mend building tactics..."

The Haitian grew silent at that and a glance in his direction only confirmed her own fear. After the untimely death of her mother, Fae had taken to the disbelief of any sort of deity. Orion, on the other hand, continued to surprise her with things she could not quite wrap her head around. She had come to expect such things out of the Creole, but when his eyes glazed and his face showed no emotion, she worried for whatever he divined.

"Baptiste gave me a warnin', cher. He said we should be ready soon t'be movin'."

She was not going to deny that his announcement gave her chills. At the fore of her mind, she was going to play it off as the chill of the air in the very early morning. There was a nagging feeling, however. Every time Baptiste was mentioned as saying something or doing something, weird things happened. Weirder than when Orion started talking to the python currently coiled around his neck and shoulders, looking up from where its head rested with a single gold-green eye. The tongue flicked out once before it settled again.

Sensing a sort of unease, Orion looked up at his silent companion. "You went quiet awful quick. Y'_sure_ you're a'ight?"

Fae shook her head at his inquiry. "I never said I as to begin with." she replied. "If you want me to be perfectly honest? I feel sick. Probably vorry-sick, but sick all ze same."

Orion's face contorted a moment, twisting into a look of concern. "Might be a lower level adrenaline rush._ You_ didn't feel it, but your _body_ sure is. It's comin' off it now; let's get you inside 'n' sat down wit'a cuppa mint tea before you actually get sick. Or pass out. Whiche'er happens first."

She gave a half-hearted chuckle at him. "I don't zink it's zat kind of sick, but I do zink I need to sit down a moment."

The Haitian clicked his tongue as though in thought. "Well, no sense in leavin' you by y'self. We've _both_ got family out t'ere, cher." There was a small laugh, one that was simultaneously musical and ominous. How he had managed it, she was not sure. Nor did she want to know. "Mind if I join?"

If Orion's face could wilt any more, it would fall off his head. His pout was _that_ convincing. Unfortunately for him, his considerably taller companion knew how to read his eyes. The bright green gaze was sparkling a bit too mischievously to be a legitimate pout.

There was a need for familiar comfort that kept Fae from turning down his offer for company. Intuition, maybe, but she felt like he would be better kept nearby until the troops came roaring home again.

She forced a smile for him. If he knew how to read deeper, there was turmoil beneath the surface of that calm façade. Something told her that he could see it, even if he did not show such. They had met about five years prior, but Orion had that feeling like she had known him since birth. It was almost like he was always three steps ahead of her as any younger brother should be.

"Company sounds good. Preferably be_fore_ ve freeze to ze lawn." she stated, crossing her arms again across her chest. This time, it was for warmth instead of stubbornness.

He chuckled at her, letting the pout wash away into a broad beaming grin. She _knew_ he was faking it. "I t'ought it was gettin' a bit chilled out here, cher." he replied, that laugh clinging to every word. Even in tone, he sounded amused.

He moved aside to let her passage back toward the house, following along behind her. A single glance was given toward the warm glow against the sky that was Detroit through the open front door, an indeterminable sigh heaved before he shut the door and locked it.


End file.
